You’ve read a couple books where fat girls get to be loved in the real world, and that’s wonderful, but fat girls don’t get whisked away into alternate worlds and told they’re a long lost princess. Fat girls don’t get to see the magical underside of New York City. Fat girls don’t save planets.

It's an interesting dichotomy. Many, if not most, fantasy writers are fat women, but fat women are apparently discriminating against fat women in their books, either because they are a) self-hating or b) subject to a false consciousness instilled by Society and The Patriarchy.

I'm going to guess that our intrepid champions of the overfed and underprivileged are going to go with option (b). But if the literary world shortchanges the big-bottomed woman, at least they can be assured that the rock world appreciates them. Talk about a LOT of bass!

but fat women are apparently discriminating against fat women in their books

It's even more fun when they do write fat chicks into their Mary Sue fiction.

Check out the "BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance" section on Amazon (it's a genre that's growing faster than Big Seanan's cankles) - all of the chubby heroines are being lusted after by hunky lycanthropic firemen and sexy billionaire vampires.

...fat girls don’t get whisked away into alternate worlds and told they’re a long lost princess. Fat girls don’t get to see the magical underside of New York City. Fat girls don’t save planets.

This is like the women who complain about the lack of women in STEM, and instead of going into STEM, they go into women's studies to complain about the lack of women in STEM.

If those people want to read about fat women in SFF, then they can write about fat women in SFF. But I suspect they won't for the simple reason that they don't want to prove beyond any doubt how unappealing fat women are, even to fat women. I mean, how devastating would it be to the big-is-beautiful crowd to know that readers would rather imagine humans having relations with dinosaurs than with fat women.

I cant wait until this Social Justice movement reaches Hollywood.Star Wars episode X should have a BBW possibly lesbian Rey saving the Republic while unable to choose between Finn and an obligatory six pack dude.They should probably just cast Lena Dunham in the role.

One time I went to this black church and sat in between these two very large black women. They had me pinned into the seat with their arm meat encroaching my personal space. When they jumped up to praise the Lord, I used that opportunity to escape.

" ... but fat women are apparently discriminating against other fat women..."

They even sometimes get angry when people try to help their fellow fatties. I once was rebuked by one of the internet fat champions when I questioned their promoting this as self acceptance as God's creation. It's like a twisted reality, I was trying to point out that as Christians they should urge each other to live as healthy as possible because their body is God's temple and they accused me of body shaming.

But I suspect they won't for the simple reason that they don't want to prove beyond any doubt how unappealing fat women are, even to fat women.Bridgette, a German woman's magazine went the plump model route and its readership dropped. It's not a magazine that men buy so one can't argue that men stopped buying it. This is just another case of watch what women do and ignore the silliness they're talking about.

The 4' tall woman, waist wider around than I am at the shoulders, that can't walk 50" without breathing heavy, will be the one complaining about men earning more than women, even in a female majority profession.

Fat girls don’t save planets.

We are being invaded by gay wedding cakes who will save us? SuperSized Dykes on Bikes.

went the plump model route and its readership dropped. It's not a magazine that men buy so one can't argue that men stopped buying it

That's why lesbians have such high rape numbers, its possible for 2 ugly dykes to wake up next to each other after drinking for double the rape.

If you can talk women into killing their own children, you can talk then into anything.

Are you sure they got talked into it? Inner city kids swallow lead fishing line sinkers, but I have never heard of a white kid doing it(they do coins). I suspect they had been given the sinkers to put in their mouths for a lead paint pay day.

Lol. After reading about various conventions, award programs, etc., and deciding it was time to get serious about my writing career, I decided it was time to go to a con, just once, to see what goes on there.

I just returned home from Lunacon in Westchester NY.

Holy cow. I mean, Holy Cows. I've read Vox's words about fandom and what it looks like before but I never truly grasped it until I saw it in person.

First, on average, 60% of the convention goers were beyond obese. Well beyond. I lost track of the number of men and women using scooters/hoverounds or walkers simply because they were so fat. Most of the really fat people didn't need a scooter: they just waddled and monopolized elevators, even in a location where only two floors are being utilized.

Smell: as bad as one might imagine.

Social skills: you can tell that they have been living like veal, mostly confined to their box (or desktop/whatever) and that those same social graces honed on blog comment threads and in Reddit and Twitter, are present in person.

I am now forced to rethink my theory the computer/internet was changing manners for the worse. I think I might have had it backwards: they have been ostracized ( often with good reason) because of the lack of social skills. And are left with the Internet as an outlet for their methane tainted opinions.

Also blurting.

W.T.F

I attended four panels on Saturday and was continuously shocked by people who blurt out whatever comes to the mind, whenever it does. And it only has a 50/50 chance of being relevant to the panel's subject. It could be anything. It was like sitting in a real world blog comment page.

It was also surprising to see how many panelists expounding on how to get published and make it in Sci Fi are self-published people with little to no following (I was constantly Googling names on my phone).

I attended the free speech vs. censorship panel with Kate Paulk. And the Sad Puppy/Rabid Puppy issue was raised by another panelist (Michael Ventrella) when he dismissed her comments with a condescending, "I know who you are." Interesting enough, the small audience, if one could hear the comments seemed divided on their opinions by gender; men were more likely to side with free speech/ Sad/Rabid puppies, women the opposite. At least in that audience of roughly 12 people.

And last, every female author I saw, with the exception of Naomi Novik, was...large. Very, large. And usually with hair dyed all sorts of colors. What the fudge is up with the hair? I thought it was a joke. It's no joke.

Real Sci-fi got to mind the energy cost of mass when orbiting, de-orbiting and, especially, in leaving a planet's atmosphere. How are they going to justify the price of a ticket on a per pound/kilogram basis.

In fantasy, what is the hero to do, roll the damsel like a barrel? It just does not look good at any lebel.

Speaking of blurting out whatever comes to the mind, with only 50/50 chance of being relevant, one of theTrump vilifiers punched a horse in the NY "DEMONstration."

You think at this point nothing can surprise you. Watch the freaks put on a KKK hood, taunt people, get beat up by a black Trump supporter, call him a racist, bask in the media glory and moral superiority, same old same.

But slap a horse? In the snout?F**k the horse police! Or something. Media? PETA? {{crickets}}

That makes it official. Every carbon based life form has now been thrown under the bus. Take note ye acrid, blue haired land whales.

I'm a small time indy author (I sell about 30K copies a year). I know I'm small time, but I also realize that for a small timer, I'm not doing bad.

So I've gone to a few cons and done a presentation on how to get your work out there, in short trying to help people with the things it took me years to figure out. Sort of a payback to the couple of folks who helped me out once.

I try to play it very low key, and I tell everyone upfront that I'm 'small potato's' in the industry.Meanwhile there are these people running around who have sold a couple of short stories to small press magazines and made less than a grand or two in their entire career going on about what big successes they are, and how everyone should listen to them.

I was put on a panel once with these people and they went down the line asking how many novels each person had out. When they got to me, I was embarrassed, because I had five times more than the biggest one there (I used to write under a pen name). They were bragging about selling one or two copies a day, and well, I sort of mumbled my response on that question when they got to me, because I didn't want to sound like I was bragging if I told them my numbers. After that, they never put me on a panel with their 'experts' again.

I know I should go to more cons and maybe get a table and try and do more self-promotion, but I'm not sure if it's really worth it. There are just too many politics. I do want to help others, and I don't really view it as a competition, we're all too small to have that mind set. But the people running these things can be incredibly petty and incredibly vindictive.

J Van Stry wrote:They were bragging about selling one or two copies a day, and well, I sort of mumbled my response on that question when they got to me, because I didn't want to sound like I was bragging

It' amazing the number of authors I see as 'award winning', and checking their Amazon stat they're below the hundred-k in ranking.

You all are missing the mother lode of SFF here. Dexter is the lover/caretaker of Beth, his 800 pound significant other. One of Dexter's labors of love is flap landing, inspecting and cleaning Beth's many wondrous fat flaps. Usually it's a Cheetos or occasionally a half a ham sandwich, but one day under a posterior flap, Dexter discovers a wondrous alternate universe where he disappears to for weeks to meet the strange new inhabitants.

I met a couple of writers who were probably in a similar situation to yourself. And they were cool. One who comes to mind was David Walton (Supersymetry, Superposition). Not only was he typically interesting and well-spoken, he was classy. And I would regularly see him on panels with "authors" who have very little to their credit.

Something that occurred to me over the weekend, as I attended more panels and got to know some of the players, was that the model for how these things work (Fandom, Cons, and the lower tier "published" writers) seemed almost incestuous.

For example:

Panel 1 has four writers, A, B, C and D

Panel 2 has four writers E, F , G, and A

When you listen to their credentials as the panel opens, you realize that E, F and G either work directly for or are married/"partnered" with A, B, C and D. And this is so for all of the panels I attended.

On one panel, a "Do's and Don't's of the first 5 pages" type, one editor said that you should be careful what you say to an editor because they all know each other. And it was obviously true and they weren't just acquaintances.

Somehow reminds me of Mary Brown's "Unlikely Ones" books. Of course, in the end, the fat girl and the pig, though exercise and luv kisses, have turned into the skinny girl and shape-changing dragon love interest, so maybe is pre-retro-subversion of the new thrust.

@66 Dave, I'd say start with the first book in the Portals of Infinity series, don't take it too seriously, it's meant to be fun, it's a bit like the pulp I used to read and enjoy. Plus the feminazi's hate it :-)

I imagine all the female heroines written by female authors have more than a touch of Mary Sue to them. No one wants to imagine their perfect fictitious self as a lumpy chubster especially not sexually liberated, fat positive chubsters.

All I want is sci-fi or fantasy writing by the men not the obesogen acceptance crowd.

And I cease the thinness/mid range to overweight issue, the topic is writing its just that women or normal non-feminist women love honor, beauty, purity, caring for ourselves (total body workouts), even thinness. But I'm the fool in my Masters words Mat 15:10-20

Oddly enough, Lunacon is one of the two cons I went to. The other was Boscon, where the one hour I really enjoyed was spent swapping songs with a quite drunk Gordy Dickson and his, at the time, not very well known shadow Robert Asprin.

Fat, female CIA operative gets to go in the field and save the day, beat the bad guy while being wooed by several men. If that wasn't enough, she's also the best fighter in the world with some kind of Fat Fu that overcomes all her physical limitations without any kind of magical explanations.

I imagine it will be taken as a documentary proof by the sofa surfers that wimmins are better than men at everything.